Last month, Christopher Handley, a collector of comic books, pled guilty to federal charges of importing and possessing obscene cartoon drawings of children; he faces a maximum prison sentence of 15 years, for a crime involving neither actual children nor actual child porn. Last week, a Tennessee prosecutor charged Michael Wayne Campbell with aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor, for photo shopping the faces of three girls onto the nude bodies of three adult women. How might this constitute a crime (outside Iran)? The prosecutor explained: "when you have the face of a small child affixed to a nude body of a mature woman, it's going to be the state's position that this is for sexual gratification and that this is simulated sexual activity." It is also a crime - a federal crime -- to share your sexual fantasies about children in private communications with other adults: Two weeks ago, the 4th circuit court of appeals declined to review the conviction of Dwight Whorley for sharing fantasies about sexual abusing children in purely textual email exchanges between consenting adults. Like Christopher Handley, Whorley was also convicted of receiving obscene Japanese cartoon drawings of children. Be careful what you imagine.

Dwight Whorley is a decidedly unappealing defendant: a convicted sex offender, he had received sexually explicit photographs of actual as well as imaginary children. But while his record and his traffic in actual child porn makes him undeserving of much sympathy, it also makes the government's troubling case against his fantasy life unnecessary: his actual child porn offenses were sufficient to convict and imprison him. Nor does the perverseness of Whorley's imaginings justify their prosecution. Our right to fantasize ought not be contingent on the moral content of our characters or fantasies; and if Whorley can be imprisoned for email discussions of repellant sexual fantasies, then so can you.

At least one federal judge was deeply troubled by this case. Dissenting from the 4th circuit's refusal to re-hear Whorley's appeal, Judge Gregory encouraged him to seek Supreme Court review: "The (Court's) obscenity jurisprudence has never come close to stripping adults of First Amendment protections for their purely private fantasies, and the implications of our sanctioning this governmental intrusion into individual freedom of thought are incredibly worrisome," Gregory wrote.

Equally worrisome is the likelihood that the Supreme Court would not accept this case for review, much less rule in Whorley's favor - even though the prosecution of people for sexual fantasies, or thought crimes - speech involving no illicit conduct and no conspiracies, solicitations, or attempts to engage in illicit conduct - was considered unconstitutional by the Court as recently as 2002: In Free Speech Coalition v Ashcroft, in a 6-3 decision, the Court struck down the Child Pornography Prevention Act bans on producing or possessing non-obscene, virtual (including computer generated) child porn. Invalidating these provisions did not require a subtle or arcane legal analysis; it required only a basic understanding of First Amendment freedoms.

The government may not criminalize speech based on claims about its indirect potential harm, as the Court stressed: "The mere tendency of speech to encourage unlawful acts is not a sufficient reason for banning it." (And, in this case, even the tendency of virtual porn to encourage child abuse was unproven.) "The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought." Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority.

That was then. Last year Justice Kennedy joined the majority in a 7 - 2 decision that effectively overruled the defense of free speech he had offered a mere four years earlier. In Williams v U.S., the Court upheld the PROTECT act, which includes a ban on pretending to traffic in sexually explicit images of actual children or obscene virtual child porn. Really. (PROTECT is an acronym for the shamelessly entitled, Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to end the Exploitation of Children Act of 2003," which was enacted in response to the Court's decision in Free Speech Coalition v Ashcroft.)

In other words, having held that Congress could not criminalize production or possession of all virtual child porn, the Court held that it could criminalize soliciting or advertising virtual child porn in the mistaken belief or with intent to persuade others to believe that it's the real thing. (The PROTECT Act also criminalizes obscene virtual child porn.) The soon to be missed Justice Souter pointed out the obvious, in a dissent joined only by Justice Ginsburg: Allowing prosecutions for pandering or soliciting non-obscene, virtual images dramatically undermines First Amendment protections the Court extended to them only a few years ago.

Dennis Whorley's conviction was based, in part, on the PROTECT Act (he was the first person convicted under it;) his conviction for sending "obscene" emails to other adults rested on an older obscenity statute, but it might easily be justified by the same impulse to prohibit virtual child porn that underlies the PROTECT Act and imprisons people for pretending to pander child porn or actually collecting obscene cartoons. It doesn't take a great leap of law of law to criminalize discussion of a cartoon - the depiction of a desire or an idea -- once you've criminalized possession of it.

Outside the respective subcultures of free speech advocates, comic book collectors, and pedophiles, not many people will mourn the loss of a right to imagine or discuss abusing children. But the rationales for censorship developed in these cases can always be extended, by carving out additional exceptions to the First Amendment. In fact, they could conceivably be extended next year, when the Supreme Court decides whether, like child porn, depictions of cruelty to animals should be denied constitutional protection. In the fall, the Court will consider the case of Robert J. Stevens, convicted and sentenced to 37 months under a federal law criminalizing the production, sale, or possession of material depicting animal cruelty; Stevens's crime was selling videos of pit bulls on the attack.

His conviction was reversed by the 3rd circuit court of appeals, which declined to create a new category of unprotected speech. The federal ban on animal cruelty depictions was based in part on assumptions about their indirect harm, the 3rd circuit observed; the government claimed an "interest in discouraging individuals from becoming desensitized to animal violence generally, because that may serve to deter future antisocial behavior toward human beings." If the Supreme Court rules that Congress may criminalize speech in the mere hope of deterring "future anti-social behavior," what speech may Congress not restrict? It's hard (and may eventually be illegal) to imagine.

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Should you drink more coffee? Should you take melatonin? Can you train yourself to need less sleep? A physician’s guide to sleep in a stressful age.

During residency, Iworked hospital shifts that could last 36 hours, without sleep, often without breaks of more than a few minutes. Even writing this now, it sounds to me like I’m bragging or laying claim to some fortitude of character. I can’t think of another type of self-injury that might be similarly lauded, except maybe binge drinking. Technically the shifts were 30 hours, the mandatory limit imposed by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, but we stayed longer because people kept getting sick. Being a doctor is supposed to be about putting other people’s needs before your own. Our job was to power through.

The shifts usually felt shorter than they were, because they were so hectic. There was always a new patient in the emergency room who needed to be admitted, or a staff member on the eighth floor (which was full of late-stage terminally ill people) who needed me to fill out a death certificate. Sleep deprivation manifested as bouts of anger and despair mixed in with some euphoria, along with other sensations I’ve not had before or since. I remember once sitting with the family of a patient in critical condition, discussing an advance directive—the terms defining what the patient would want done were his heart to stop, which seemed likely to happen at any minute. Would he want to have chest compressions, electrical shocks, a breathing tube? In the middle of this, I had to look straight down at the chart in my lap, because I was laughing. This was the least funny scenario possible. I was experiencing a physical reaction unrelated to anything I knew to be happening in my mind. There is a type of seizure, called a gelastic seizure, during which the seizing person appears to be laughing—but I don’t think that was it. I think it was plain old delirium. It was mortifying, though no one seemed to notice.

His paranoid style paved the road for Trumpism. Now he fears what’s been unleashed.

Glenn Beck looks like the dad in a Disney movie. He’s earnest, geeky, pink, and slightly bulbous. His idea of salty language is bullcrap.

The atmosphere at Beck’s Mercury Studios, outside Dallas, is similarly soothing, provided you ignore the references to genocide and civilizational collapse. In October, when most commentators considered a Donald Trump presidency a remote possibility, I followed audience members onto the set of The Glenn Beck Program, which airs on Beck’s website, theblaze.com. On the way, we passed through a life-size replica of the Oval Office as it might look if inhabited by a President Beck, complete with a portrait of Ronald Reagan and a large Norman Rockwell print of a Boy Scout.

“Well, you’re just special. You’re American,” remarked my colleague, smirking from across the coffee table. My other Finnish coworkers, from the school in Helsinki where I teach, nodded in agreement. They had just finished critiquing one of my habits, and they could see that I was on the defensive.

I threw my hands up and snapped, “You’re accusing me of being too friendly? Is that really such a bad thing?”

“Well, when I greet a colleague, I keep track,” she retorted, “so I don’t greet them again during the day!” Another chimed in, “That’s the same for me, too!”

Unbelievable, I thought. According to them, I’m too generous with my hellos.

When I told them I would do my best to greet them just once every day, they told me not to change my ways. They said they understood me. But the thing is, now that I’ve viewed myself from their perspective, I’m not sure I want to remain the same. Change isn’t a bad thing. And since moving to Finland two years ago, I’ve kicked a few bad American habits.

Why did Trump’s choice for national-security advisor perform so well in the war on terror, only to find himself forced out of the Defense Intelligence Agency?

How does a man like retired Lieutenant General Mike Flynn—who spent his life sifting through information and parsing reports, separating rumor and innuendo from actionable intelligence—come to promote conspiracy theories on social media?

Perhaps it’s less Flynn who’s changed than that the circumstances in which he finds himself—thriving in some roles, and flailing in others.

In diagnostic testing, there’s a basic distinction between sensitivity, or the ability to identify positive results, and specificity, the ability to exclude negative ones. A test with high specificity may avoid generating false positives, but at the price of missing many diagnoses. One with high sensitivity may catch those tricky diagnoses, but also generate false positives along the way. Some people seem to sift through information with high sensitivity, but low specificity—spotting connections that others can’t, and perhaps some that aren’t even there.

Why the ingrained expectation that women should desire to become parents is unhealthy

In 2008, Nebraska decriminalized child abandonment. The move was part of a "safe haven" law designed to address increased rates of infanticide in the state. Like other safe-haven laws, parents in Nebraska who felt unprepared to care for their babies could drop them off in a designated location without fear of arrest and prosecution. But legislators made a major logistical error: They failed to implement an age limitation for dropped-off children.

Within just weeks of the law passing, parents started dropping off their kids. But here's the rub: None of them were infants. A couple of months in, 36 children had been left in state hospitals and police stations. Twenty-two of the children were over 13 years old. A 51-year-old grandmother dropped off a 12-year-old boy. One father dropped off his entire family -- nine children from ages one to 17. Others drove from neighboring states to drop off their children once they heard that they could abandon them without repercussion.

The president-elect has chosen Andrew Puzder, a vocal critic of minimum-wage hikes and new overtime rules.

Updated on December 9, 2016

President-Elect Donald Trump announced Thursday evening that he picked Andrew Puzder, the CEO of CKE Restaurants, which owns fast-food chains Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, to lead the U.S. Department of Labor. Puzder—like several of Trump’s other nominees—is a multi-millionaire and Washington outsider who served as an adviser and fundraiser during the presidential campaign. While there’s no political record to indicate how Puzder thinks about the labor market, his remarks as a business executive give some indication of the stances he’ll take on several important labor issues.

If confirmed, Puzder will likely take a pro-business, anti-labor, approach to steering the federal agency tasked with protecting American workers and their jobs, which clashes with Trump’s populist campaign message of fighting for blue-collar workers. Puzder has been a vocal defender of Trump’s economic policies, including lowering the corporate-tax rate, and has opposed Obamacare and certain business regulations, such as a higher minimum wage. Puzder has argued against raising the minimum wage and offering paid leave and health insurance to employees. Efforts to increase the minimum wage, he writes, will hurt everyone, especially low-skilled workers, because “businesses will have to figure out the best way to deal with the high labor costs.” Those changes, he says, will lead to price increases, more efficient labor management, and automation.

Democrats who have struggled for years to sell the public on the Affordable Care Act are now confronting a far more urgent task: mobilizing a political coalition to save it.

Even as the party reels from last month’s election defeat, members of Congress, operatives, and liberal allies have turned to plotting a campaign against repealing the law that, they hope, will rival the Tea Party uprising of 2009 that nearly scuttled its passage in the first place. A group of progressive advocacy groups will announce on Friday a coordinated effort to protect the beneficiaries of the Affordable Care Act and stop Republicans from repealing the law without first identifying a plan to replace it.

They don’t have much time to fight back. Republicans on Capitol Hill plan to set repeal of Obamacare in motion as soon as the new Congress opens in January, and both the House and Senate could vote to wind down the law immediately after President-elect Donald Trump takes the oath of office on the 20th.

A professor of cognitive science argues that the world is nothing like the one we experience through our senses.

As we go about our daily lives, we tend to assume that our perceptions—sights, sounds, textures, tastes—are an accurate portrayal of the real world. Sure, when we stop and think about it—or when we find ourselves fooled by a perceptual illusion—we realize with a jolt that what we perceive is never the world directly, but rather our brain’s best guess at what that world is like, a kind of internal simulation of an external reality. Still, we bank on the fact that our simulation is a reasonably decent one. If it wasn’t, wouldn’t evolution have weeded us out by now? The true reality might be forever beyond our reach, but surely our senses give us at least an inkling of what it’s really like.

Trinidad has the highest rate of Islamic State recruitment in the Western hemisphere. How did this happen?

This summer, the so-called Islamic State published issue 15 of its online magazine Dabiq. In what has become a standard feature, it ran an interview with an ISIS foreign fighter. “When I was around twenty years old I would come to accept the religion of truth, Islam,” said Abu Sa’d at-Trinidadi, recalling how he had turned away from the Christian faith he was born into.

At-Trinidadi, as his nom de guerre suggests, is from the Caribbean island of Trinidad and Tobago (T&T), a country more readily associated with calypso and carnival than the “caliphate.” Asked if he had a message for “the Muslims of Trinidad,” he condemned his co-religionists at home for remaining in “a place where you have no honor and are forced to live in humiliation, subjugated by the disbelievers.” More chillingly, he urged Muslims in T&T to wage jihad against their fellow citizens: “Terrify the disbelievers in their own homes and make their streets run with their blood.”

Since the end of World War II, the most crucial underpinning of freedom in the world has been the vigor of the advanced liberal democracies and the alliances that bound them together. Through the Cold War, the key multilateral anchors were NATO, the expanding European Union, and the U.S.-Japan security alliance. With the end of the Cold War and the expansion of NATO and the EU to virtually all of Central and Eastern Europe, liberal democracy seemed ascendant and secure as never before in history.

Under the shrewd and relentless assault of a resurgent Russian authoritarian state, all of this has come under strain with a speed and scope that few in the West have fully comprehended, and that puts the future of liberal democracy in the world squarely where Vladimir Putin wants it: in doubt and on the defensive.